Film reviews and more
The opening scene of Guadagnino’s I Am Love (2009) throws the doors wide open onto the lavish lifestyle of an upper class Italian family, the Recchi’s, great industrialists who have accrued a vast fortune through their textile empire. As the […]
As the 12th Udine Far East Film Festival progresses into its eighth day, the selection of films is still impressing audiences with its quality. The broad range of countries and genres presents an invaluable opportunity to compare stereotypes and traditional storylines, as […]
To say Roman Polanski has suffered some bad press lately would be an understatement. The 76-year-old is detained in Switzerland, waiting to hear if he’ll be extradited to the United States to stand trial for the statutory rape of a […]
★★★★☆ At the beginning of Gallants (2009) the opening narrator introduces the audience to the film’s protagonist Cheung (Yau-Nam Wong ), an awkward nerd of Napoleon Dynamite (2004) proportions. He dreams of becoming a Kung-Fu fighter, but now that his youthful bullying days […]
This year, the 12th instalment of the Udine Far East Film Festival is to screen a retrospective set of films produced by Japanese film studio Shintoho from the late 1950’s to the early 1960’s, including Shimura Toshio’s Revenge of the Pearl Queen (1956) and The Horizon Glitters […]
★★★★☆ An Education (2009) is based on the memoir of British journalist Lynn Barber. In the early 1960s, aged sixteen, she was swept off her feet by the attentions of an older man. Fortunately, she discovered in time that he […]
I saw Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass (2010) for the second time last night and I can honestly say the film loses none of its edge on a repeat viewing. Like many of those who have seen the big screen adaptation of […]
★★★★☆ If you haven’t heard of Josh Harris before, perhaps it’s time to rectify that. The timely release of Dig! (2004) director Ondi Timoner’s new documentary, We Live in Public reminisces on the last 40 years since the dawn of the […]
★★★★☆ For those who caught James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) during the film’s cinematic release, this was most likely the first thought to have entered your warped minds as you left the local multiplex/IMAX. Now released for the small screen on 2D formats DVD and […]
‘Generation Y’, filled to the brim with jobless university graduates and unemployed professionals are currently facing a very thinly-spread job market. According to the world’s media, what seemed like a very promising generation is now on the verge of becoming […]
★★★★☆ Conforming to the usual fun-filled predictability of the romantic-comedy genre, as well as the big budget aesthetics and laugh out loud humour associated with lead actress/director Eva Jin, Sophie’s Revenge (2009) shows us that whatever Hollywood can do Asian Cinema can […]
Much like the Silk Road that twists its ancient path through vast continents and difficult terrains, South Korea’s cinematic trade has battled against harsh adversities since the division of Korea. Born amidst an ongoing political antithesis between the Communist North […]